Blog Archives

Best Western – very disappointing brand identity makeover

It has been a few months since I made my long road cross country trip so I have had time to cool off and consider my position on the logo and image makeover of the Best Western chain of lodges.

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Hospitality & Travel, Name Changes, Rotten Names, Uncategorized

It takes some spunk to name your company Splunk.

When I first heard the name Splunk® I thought how cool a name it was. Surely one of those new mobile apps for and by millennials. No, rather it is the name of a back end data server and privacy

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Posted in Branding, Domain Names, Name Origins, Naming Education, Naming News, Technology Names, Trademarks

Inside Steve’s Brain quotes me at length about iPod name

It only took 10 years, but finally a good friend called me and said “Athol, do you know you are quoted in one of Steve Job’s biographies?” Well, yes indeed, Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney has recently been expanded

Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Name Origins, Naming News, Technology Names

Patreon – Patrons for the Ages

From the minute I learned about Patreon I have been pleasantly overwhelmed with the cleverness of their offerings, and the memorability of their name. Of course I wondered why they had not tried harder to be Patron or Patron something.

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Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Hospitality & Travel, International Naming, Name Origins, Naming News, Strange Names, Trademarks

When your brand logo has a nickname

A few blogs back we asked if you knew the nicknames for the McDonalds and Ford logos. Surely most of you knew the easy answer to the first part of this: The Golden Arches for McDonalds ubiquitos big M symbol.

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Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Naming Education, Naming News, Retail, Trademarks, Transportation

Engineers and Scientists are People too.

Should you brand industrial and scientific products? How about embedded engineering items? Who is going to know? Who is going to care? I have had many a client over the years wrestle with these questions and comments, to which I

Posted in Biotech Naming, Branding, Industrial Products Naming, International Naming, Naming News, Technology Names

Acuspire makes Startup Grind’s Top 50

In between handling our very big clients we are often working on small startups, not all of whom make a go of it. But when the do, we love it. Like hearing yesterday from Acuspire that they had been selected

Posted in Branding, Domain Names, Naming News, Technology Names

Brand quiz answers

(Disclaimer:  I did rely on search engines and Wikipedia for some of the amusing and interesting background info. As author of the quiz, I knew most of the answers to these questions when I posted them – except Question 1)

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Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Food Names, Name Origins, Naming Education, People Names, Trademarks, Transportation

Family brand name quiz – while you eat and drive

While putting together a previous post (“Nomen Est Omen?” Uh, Not Always…) I got to thinking about both family and given names that are now well-known brands. There are enough quirky examples and stories that I thought I’d put together

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Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Food Names, Name Origins, People Names, Trademarks, Transportation

An “-ify” Proposition

Things began, as they often do, with an e-mail from Athol: “With Spotify near an IPO, why don’t we look at other names using the –ify suffix?” I’m back from the Interwebs with three categories for these names: the Useful,

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Posted in Branding, Consumer Goods, Retail